This is a plate of a book that I looked for quite some time: a book on the civil militia of the Free City of Strasbourg, in the Elzas. The city could remain independent up till the 1690's, and that wasn't the fault of the quite large militia. Down the book and enjoy the list of officers and the beautiful flags, which show a great similarity to other militias and armies.

One of the few 17th century plates by Richard Knötel representing the 17th century, being troops from Hannover, Germany. More of his works here. Most of the plates in this series of books are 19th century ones.

dinsdag 27 juli 2010

A commercial website here, with a lot of plates of flags, and you can check out the previews as well. I noticed some familiar dutch flags, that look like they are taken from the series Het Staatse Leger. (or shortened HSL, the series on the States' Army 1568-1715).

The above flags are described as 'British Flags' and probably are ECW flags .

~For those who aren't aware of it: EEBO is a goldmine for historians, wargamers, linguists and well..probably a lot of others as well. We mentioned the infabtry handbook earlier, this time we focus on the cavalry handbook by Cruso, from the 1620'a, but still in print 60 years later! Lot's of tips, instructions and pretty pictures for the budding cavalry colonel.

News from Blue Moon miniatures from the USA, a 15mm Marlburian range. Unfortunatly Blue Moon suffers from the same problems parent company Old Glory has: quality. Some of the ranges are original and well designed but some others are, well... not. Fortunatly 15mm is not my scale for this period as these mini's could do a lot better.

If you don't have access to EEBO, this is one of the reasons you should: a 300 + paged book form the year 1672 on weapons, exercises, how to make camp, which colours to use et. etc, THE handbook for beginning and experienced commander and captains, written by Thomas Venn.

Louis XIV had an army of silver toy soldiers, which was melted down during the economic crisis of 1715. I wonder to whom these two silver soldiers (dated ca. 1700) belonged, which are in the collection of the Historisch Museum Arnhem.

Today in 1747, the French started their bombardment on the fortress city of Bergen op Zoom, a fortress designed by the great Menno Baron of Coehoorn. It wans't his design that caused the fall of the fortress in a war, in which the Republic was dragged by the English.

Mr Harry Perton kindly pointed me to the website of the British Museum: after creating an account you can get mid-res resolution copies of the pictures, and you can use and reproduce them non-commercially for free. The above pic of the siege of Groningen is about 1,5 MB in size and unfortunatly, this isn't enough to catch all the details: if you look very carefully you can barely distinguish the swans on a Munster banner. Of course this is a great initiative, which I laud gracefully.

Two pictures to lighten up an already sunny Sunday morning. The first one is of the castle of Wedde, a village near the Dutch/German border, often contested in several wars and occupied twice by the Munster troops, as a stop on the route to Groningen.

The picture comes from the website of the castle. Unfortunatly, the text is in dutch as it has a lot of info on the history of the Munster/Dutch border area.

The second pic shows a map of the town of Tiel, occupied by the French in 1672. The plate comes from the image bank of the musea in the Province of Guelders. Enter a text in the white bar, left of the word 'zoeken', which means search, to perform a search.

The political landscape of the Republic was quite complicated, and as a result military matters are a rich source for research as well.

Next to States' paid units in the States army, there were town militia's (de schutterij), ' het uitschot' or a kind of levee en masse, and the so called 'Waardgelders', litt. translated as ' Waiting for Money'. These Waardgelders were temporary troops paid and hired by towns and cities, after permission by the States General. The picture above by Droochsloot, deals with the Prince Maurice period in which the waardgelders were used for political means.

In 1672, Waardgelders were used to supplement the troops.

In a history book on Vlaardingen (a town in the province of Holland), I found a reference on a company of waardgelders, the name of their Captain (Fagel) and a description of their company flag:

'A yellow colour with the weapon of the town (a red standing lion facing left, the Republic's 'sign') in a crest, with ornaments of leaves and fruits (orange apples I presume, to show commitment to the House of Orange), with the motto:' Watch your life and goods for the Fatherland, with courage and reason' .

It may come as a surprise to foreigners, but the Netherlands has two official languages, being Dutch and Frisian. The Frisians are very proud of their cultural heritage and the Royal Cultural and Historical Frisian Society, was the founder of the Frisian museum, and originator of the scientific-historical magazine, 'De Vrije Fries', 'The Free Frisian'.

A while ago I found an article called 'Frisians in Bodegraven 1672'. After some digging I found out, it was an article in ' De Vrije Fries', by Ms Rinskje Visser, on the fate of Johan van Burum, the Lt-Colonel of regiment Burmania and commander of the ill-fated fortress of Coevorden in 1672.

The border fotresses like Bourtange and Coevorden, where of special interest to the northern provinces of the Republic, as they were protecting their eastern borders, so it was not something strange that a Frisian was commander. Also the Northern Provinces paid extra for it, and as a counter financial strike a local was appointed to command. Unfortunatly for van Burum, the fortress was in terrible shape, the troops refused to fight after the initial bombardment and the fortress town had to surrender.

Van Burum didn't get off: he had to answer himself for a court martial and the article describes and publishes the correspondence with his family. Finally he was sentenced to a fine, kicked out of military service and got three year in prison! The jail sentence was probably commuted by William III as van Burum got back to Friesland quite soon afterwards, but not after experiencing some hair rasing moments when the French broke through at Bodegraven. You can find the links in the dutch text above.

A while ago I posted a b/w pic of the colour of the Culveneers Militia of Dordrecht, but on the image bank of the archives and council of Dordrecht, I found the original pic, above two colours of the militia of the Revolutionary period.

Atten....shun! On the website British Army Lineages, a reference can be found on the works of a Nathan Brook from 1690, giving detailed information on King James' Army, with colour and uniform references. Above - from EEBO- info on the York & Albany Regiment.

A ship's flag of the county of West-Friesland, from the 1966 book 'Flags of the World', published in Amsterdam by Emmering. The book contains an edited manuscript of 1699/1670 containgen sketches, pictures and texts regarding ship's flags from that period from Europe, Turkey and Northern Africa, with an english text by the late Klaas Sierksma. Lavishly illustrated and nice printwork. Only 1000 copies of this work were made.

A german book on flags and colours, from 1939, so if you are offended by swastika's don't read this book! Contains a lot of info on mainly european flags, especially Germany. Also has an interesting literature list.

In the Frisian village of de Blesse on the border of Overijssel and Friesland, a grenade was found near a sconce during an excavation. The grenade is a rare found, probably the fuse got wet and the infernal machine didn't explode. More here.

maandag 5 juli 2010

The French Gallica site of the National Library BNF is getting more and more info, and today I stumbled on a large pic of Seneffe, and made a cut-out of it. In Leyden there's another version of this map. Rather pricy products unfortunatly.

Bovenstaande prent is An Exact prospect of His Majesties forces, as they are encamped on Hounslow-Heath, in the county of Middlesex being three miles in length : July 19. 1686. , London printed : ... To be sold by Walter Davis, [1686], EEBOBib name / number: Wing / E3671.

You don't need to travel far these days to find interesting documents. The above broadside (details can be found in the dutch text), comes from the excellent EEBO site, and deals with the English Army of 1686 of course.

zaterdag 3 juli 2010

Well, that's rather good news: Dr Olaf van Nimwegen's book on the Dutch Army of the 17th century will be translated in English and published by Boydell&Brewer. Essential reading for this period. BUY THIS BOOK!!

From a 1738 book on coins and history by Johann David Kohlers, a quote on the proceedings of the belligerents in 1674 being:

'Whilst in the year 1674, the Bishop of Munster, entered the frozen land and water of the Province of Groningen, via the Monestary of Ter Apel with a thousand man on horse and foot, attacked the town of Winschoten and the surrounding villages and plundered them, he next passed through the county of Bentheim. As a reaction Rabehaupt attacked the Munster-land with 5000 men. He passed the fortress of Grambergen, that was occupied with Munster troops, and moved to Nordhorn, in which he ordered Captain Broersma to stay with some of his men. Rabenhaupt moved to Neuenhaus, which was occuoied with 900 men. because the water lelev was that high, he couldn't storm the place at once.

Meanwhile, about 3000 Munster cavalry attacked Broersma in Nordhorn,but he could hold out long enough to hold the place until he was relieved by Rabenhaupt, who chased teh Munster troops away. After this, Rabenhaupt started the siege of Neuenhaus again, and on the 7. March with 5 regiments the town was stormed. The fierce attack took place between the Feldhunser water mill and the Frenkweger gate, by the regiments of Rabenhaupt and Eybergen. After three quarter of an hour of fierce fighting, the Munster troops retreated to the castle. Again thre enemy attacked vigorously, and thus quarter was asked and given, and the place changed sides again. 26 officiers and 600 men were captured. After a few days Rabenhaupt was ordered to move again. Eybergen had to hold the place with 9 companies on foot and 5 on horse to demolish the earth-works. On the 19th of aprl though general Nagel attacked the place again and stormed the town succesfully.

P.S. if you click on the pic above, it will direct you to the book and the right page.

Two quotes from the dutch version of the Depping book on Bernard van Galen. According to the French and the Munster sources, Eybergen is said to have died in Munsterland, after a raid by Rabenhaupt in the Bentheim area. Rabenhaupt was threatened to got cut off and 'fled' to Coevorden, but Eybergen wasn't so lucky. According to Depping that is.

May we welcome you to this weblog about the French-Dutch and English-Dutch wars of the 17th and 18th century, initially set up around the year 1672, known in Dutch history as 'disaster year'. The blog deals with local, national and international history, military history, art, culture and wargaming.

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